appreciation of the fact of walking itself--in the description of
Martin and Tom Pinch walking into Salisbury to dine with John Westlock.
Even here the main theme is that walking keeps a man warm on a cold day,
and gives him an appetite for dinner--a view which is very little above
the grovelling opinions of Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. The
fact that Martin and Tom walked when they might have driven, and
actually found it pleasanter, is flaunted in the reader’s face as a
novel and startling paradox. Any idea that walking can do something more
than keep us warm or make us hungry seems as far from the mind of
Dickens the writer as the fact, to which the modern world is awaking,
that driving is, with the exception of waltzing and croquet, one of the
most despicable of human activities.
But Dickens the writer was not quite the same as Dickens the man. The
writer may have taken a low view of walking; the man was first and last
a walker. He was a walker of a peculiar kind; in this as in everything
else he was a Londoner. But among London walkers he was one of the
greatest. Streets and lamps and human beings, the dim glare and muffled
din of London by night, were to him what seas and mountains have been to
other poets; they were the food, perhaps the stimulants, of his
imagination. And his intimacy with them was not merely the feeling of
one who had lived among them. It was that of one who had walked among
them, at full stretch, with every muscle taut and every nerve astrain,
the feverish reality without answering to the feverish fancy within. It
was no doubt by an instinct rather than by conscious purpose that he
sought his inspiration in the sights and sounds of the city; his
pathetic cry from among the glories of Italy that he cannot be happy
without streets, shows only the simple and uncomprehended craving of a
child. For the same reason, there is not much patent trace in his works
of the compelling influence which London had upon him. Only here and
there--in the lonely walks of Neville Landless ‘to cross the bridges and
tire himself out,’ in the stern chase of David Copperfield and Mr.
Peggotty after Martha, or the deadly pursuit of Eugene Wrayburn by
Bradley Headstone--do we catch hints of that tremendous vision as
revealed to the night-walker, which suffuses every stone of Dickens’s
London with the glow of excitement and romance.
There is one walker in Dickens who deserves mention for a special
reason. This is Canon Crisparkle, one of the three or four clergymen of
the Established Church who figure among the thousand or so characters of
Dickens; the blameless athlete who bathes before breakfast on a frosty
morning, spars at the looking-glass, and is obviously destined to be
rewarded by the hand of Helena. Dickens, conscious perhaps that he had
hitherto slighted the Church, and anxious to make amends, intended to be
as kind as possible to the Canon; but he builded better than he knew. In
those days when Kingsley was yet living, and muscular Christianity only
beginning to dawn upon the popular consciousness, Dickens, with the wild
divination of genius, adds one little touch to the Canon’s portrait
which stamps him indelibly as the forerunner of all that hearty and
back-slapping orthodoxy which devastated the ’eighties and ’nineties,
and turned to gall the milk of reverence in many a young breast. ‘I have
not lived in a walking country, you know,’ says Neville Landless.
‘True,’ says Mr. Crisparkle, ‘get into a little training and we will
have a few score miles together. I should leave you nowhere now.’ And
thus the author, carried beyond himself by his own creative genius,
marks his hero unmistakably as a braggart and a liar.
* * * * *
When we reach Meredith we are in daylight at last, and walking is
comprehended as no mere mechanical process, but a great activity of the
whole being of man. Passage after passage, phrase after incomparable
phrase, call to the walker with the sound of trumpets. ‘He jumped to his
feet ... and attacked the dream-giving earth with tremendous long
strides, that his blood might be lively at the throne of understanding.’
‘He was a man of quick pace, the sovereign remedy for the dispersing of
the mental fen-mist. He had tried it, and knew that nonsense is to be
walked off.’ ‘The taking of rain and sun alike befits men of our
climate, and he who would have the secret of a strengthening
intoxication must court the clouds of the south-west with a lover’s
blood.’ ‘Carry your fever to the Alps, you of minds diseased: not to sit
down in sight of them ruminating, for bodily ease and comfort will trick
the soul and set you measuring our lean humanity against yonder sublime
and infinite; but mount, rack the limbs, wrestle it out among the peaks;
taste danger, sweat, earn rest; learn to discover ungrudgingly that
haggard fatigue is the fair vision you have run to earth, and that rest
is your uttermost reward.’
It would be a pleasing task to recall in detail all the walkers of
Meredith: Richard Feverel in the storm in the forest; Evan Harrington on
the road to his father’s funeral; Carinthia and Chillon in the
mountains; Gower Woodseer; Arthur Rhodes on the night walk to Epsom and
Denbies; Harry Richmond and Temple, made free of romance by the first
touch of their feet on German soil, marching inevitably to find the
fairy princess. But I must pass them by in order to linger awhile on the
greatest of them all, the living embodiment of the best that is in
walking, Vernon Whitford.
At the outset the author wins our sympathy for Vernon by a single bold
stroke: he comes before us first in ‘the electrical atmosphere of the
dancing room’ crossing himself, and crossing his bewildered lady
(Lætitia), and ‘extorting shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin
Willoughby.’ It was only a square dance, so that Vernon is free from the
suspicion of having contaminated himself, even from a sense of duty,
with waltzing. The rest of his story is mainly composed of walks. He
meets Clara and Crossjay on his way back from a long walk on the evening
of Clara’s arrival, when she is wrestling with the repugnance which she
thought was ended, but was really only beginning; they walk together,
and at once he takes his place somewhere in the back of her head, so
that in her reflections she ‘puts another name for Oxford.’ They walk
again after she has found him sleeping under the double-blossom wild
cherry-tree; they talk of the Alps--clearly the beginning of the end.
Then follow two of the only three important interviews between them
which take place under cover. First Clara, instructed by Willoughby to
sound Vernon on the project of marrying Lætitia, ‘casts aside the silly
mission’ and gives him the truth; immediately he goes off for a walk,
returning late at night. Then comes the interview in the inn parlour,
but this is only after both have had a wild scurry across country in the
rain of the south-west. (See Note A below.) All through the crisis of
the book Vernon is scouring the country in pursuit of Crossjay, and
returns in time to deliver (in the open air) the decisive blow at
Willoughby. Then follows the fateful walk with Clara, when he talks of
Switzerland, Tyrol, the _Iliad_, Antigone, Political Economy--anything,
we may add, to save poor Clara’s face. Last comes the short interview at
night, which might have reached the climax, had not both by an instinct
reserved it for a more fitting place ‘between the Swiss and Tyrol Alps
over the Lake of Constance.’ It is not only they of minds diseased who
carry their fever to the Alps.
Vernon makes such a claim upon our sympathy that we are driven to decide
in his favour what would be with a lesser man a very doubtful point.
When he meets Clara on the occasion of their first walk, he tells her
that he has just walked nine-and-a-half hours to get rid of the temper
caused by Crossjay. Now breakfast at Patterne on a normal morning (see
Note A below) ended at a quarter to ten, and it must have taken some
little time for Crossjay to rouse Vernon’s temper to the walking off
point. After he meets Clara they walk for some little time before
returning to the hall for dinner, for which presumably they dressed.
Dinner at that epoch at the very most cannot have been later than
half-past seven, or possibly eight. It is thus very difficult to see
where Vernon’s nine-and-a-half hours come in. But Vernon was no Canon
Crisparkle, and it is hard to think that he lied to Clara at such a time
and on such a matter: we therefore shut our eyes and asseverate blindly
that he walked exactly nine-and-a-half hours.
Further, he walked at a pace of something over four-and-a-half miles an
hour. If any one wishes to contest this statement, he will have to read
Note A below.
* * * * *
After Meredith come professed essayists on the subject of
walking--notably Stevenson and Leslie Stephen. I do not propose to treat
them at any length, partly because it would be presumptuous and partly
because I carefully postponed reading them until seven-eighths of this
work were completed. On looking through their essays I am abased, but
not disheartened: they say most of what can be said on the subject much
better than any one else can say it, but what of that? There is never
any harm in repeating a thing, especially when it is important.
Stevenson says the essential things about walking once and incomparably;
and just for that reason people are apt to overlook them. For example,
he says that the traveller ‘becomes more and more incorporated with the
material landscape, and the open-air drunkenness grows upon him with
great strides’; the ordinary Stevensonian exclaims, ‘How charming!’ and
promptly forgets all about it. But when later writers make seven or
eight incompetent attempts at the same idea, the reader begins to think
there is really something there, and to explore the meaning for himself.
It is like passing seven or eight inaccurate sign-posts all pointing to
the same place; it is hard to resist turning up by one of them, and when
the road leads you nowhere you become all the more anxious to find the
place, and all the more impressed when you reach it; whereas, if you are
planted there suddenly and miraculously, you say, ‘How charming!’ and
pass on. The right course is to read these essays first, then go several
walks, and then read Stevenson. Therefore no more of him.
* * * * *
Some interesting but perverse treatment of walking is to be found in
Ibsen. His characters walk a good deal, but it never seems to have a
proper effect on them; they return from their walks without one string
of their nervous temperament loosened, or one facet of their personality
rounded. Johannes Rosmer is out for a walk on Kroll’s first visit, and
Rebecca remarks that he has stayed out longer than usual. He returns,
not dirty, not hungry, not mentally equable and idea-proof, but just the
same as when he started out; he begins talking at once, and in ten
minutes is arguing about politics, and in twenty is inaugurating a
life-long breach with his brother-in-law; finally, at the end of the
act, he goes to bed without any supper. He cannot really have been much
of a walker. In the third act Rebecca particularly impresses upon him
twice that he is to take ‘a good long walk’ to give her time for her
interview with Kroll. The good long walk lasts exactly eight pages in
the English translation, and he comes back fresh enough to take a lively
part in the overwhelming scene which finally brings his house toppling
about his ears. Surely Rebecca herself, the incomparable heroine for
whose sake we throw over all moral judgments and tear up all
commandments, the serene wielder of a concrete purpose, vanquished only
by herself, the most attractive murderess who ever drove a rival by lies
into a mill-dam--surely she was a better walker than Rosmer.
Hilda Wangel, too--what the plague had she to do with a walking-tour? If
she had really walked from her home to the Solness’ house, would there
have been much left of her abstract purpose? Would she have come in with
her eyes sparkling to demand the redemption of the ten-year pledge?
Surely twenty miles of Norwegian country, if properly walked, would have
warned her to leave Solness alone, and continue her walk somewhere else.
It is the same with Gregers Werle: if he had really gone for a walk with
Hialmar, he could not have kept the cutting-edge of his ideal sharp
enough to sever all Hialmar’s roots: they would have begun to talk about
the weather, and would have had a large tea and returned smoking pipes
with their ideals filed for future reference.
Elsewhere in modern literature there are signs, though only a few, that
walking is coming to its own. The most cheering example is Mr. Belloc,
who not only records walks, but writes in the true walking mood, with
plenty of irrelevancy, plenty of dogmatism, and thorough conviction on
the matter of eating and drinking. Mr. Wells also sends his young people
out for walks occasionally, with the best results. But the best
description of walking, or rather Walking Out, in modern literature
outside Meredith is in Browning’s ‘Last Ride Together.’ It is true that
he wrote it about riding, but I am sure that this was really a mistake.
Any one who has ever started on a walk after a hard week’s work can only
admit one interpretation to the lines:
My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll,
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
It may have been simply a printer’s error: by adding two letters we can
set the matter right:
What if we still stride on, we two,
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree
The instant made eternity--
And heaven just prove that I and she
Stride, stride together, forever stride.
This at least was what the young gentleman was saying to the young lady
that afternoon, when I overtook them just short of Newland’s Corner. It
is a grassy track, and it was well that I stepped on a stick.
NOTE A
_On the Rates of Walking of Various Persons in the Egoist, Chapters 25
sqq._
It will be remembered that Clara and Crossjay walked to the station
after breakfast, followed first by Vernon and later by De Craye. A close
scrutiny of the details given produces some very interesting
information.
The first point is the time of the train. Willoughby says that ‘eleven
is the hour,’ but as he adds airily that there is ‘a card in the
smoking-room,’ we cannot trust this evidence alone. But Vernon, we are
told, timed himself to reach the station at ten minutes to eleven, and
this before he met Dr. Corney, who drove him part of the way. On getting
to the station he tells Clara that she has ‘full fifteen minutes,
besides fair chances of delay.’ It seems fairly clear then that the
train was due at just about eleven, that Vernon reached the station at
10.44 or so, and Clara some time earlier.
If the train was due at eleven, the distance to the station can be
approximately fixed. When Clara starts the drive back, she passes her
own train ‘eighteen minutes late by her watch.’[5] She arrives at the
Hall just as twelve is striking. The drive consequently took just over
forty-two minutes. The roads were wet, and Flitch’s horse probably
decrepit: the distance by road may therefore be fixed at about four
miles. By taking the footpath, according to Crossjay, ‘you save a mile.’
Crossjay may be trusted on a point like this, and we may thus estimate
the field way at three miles.
Now the field way passed through the West Lodge Park Gate. This was
clearly not far from the Hall. Clara left the breakfast-room at 9.45.
She then had to get her hat and meet Crossjay behind the pheasantry,
and, on the lodge-keeper’s wife’s statement to De Craye, they were
through the gate before ten. We infer that the distance was at most
half a mile, leaving two and a half miles to the station. Clara and
Crossjay cannot have been through the gate much before ten, and after
meeting the tramp and sending Crossjay back, she was still at the
station before Vernon--_i.e._ before 10.44. The inference is that in wet
clothes and over bad ground--even Vernon found the footpath
slippery--she went nearly four miles an hour. In dry clothes and on a
good ground, she had to fall into a special kind of trot to keep up with
Vernon, reminding him of the Piedmontese Bersaglieri, and that at the
end of a nine-and-a-half-hour day. It is clear, therefore, that Vernon’s
pace cannot have been much below five miles an hour.
His own timing on the morning of the flight is not very exactly given.
The lodge-keeper’s wife told De Craye that he was through the gate half
an hour after Clara. If this is accurate, the time would be about 10.25.
He then, after meeting Crossjay, timed himself to be at the station at
10.50--twenty-five minutes for two and a half miles. But he clearly
intended to run: and although this shows his running pace to be
creditable, we cannot safely infer from it to his walking pace.
One further interesting point emerges, namely, that De Craye’s watch,
after setting everybody right at breakfast, went hopelessly wrong in
the course of the morning. It was ten minutes past eleven by his watch
when he left the Park gate: yet he was at the station in time to meet
Clara, and, after some discussion, to drive back with her (11.17 or at
most 11.21--see above). It is not stated where he picked up Flitch’s
cab, but even Flitch can hardly have driven in from five to ten minutes
a distance which, with a short piece added, took him forty-two minutes
on the return journey. A frivolous observer might suggest that the
author was not very careful in his timing: but, apart from the hideous
blasphemy, this would invalidate most of the previous argument. We
therefore shut our eyes once more, and affirm that De Craye’s watch went
wrong.
VII
WALKING EQUIPMENT
ἀδύνατον γὰρ ἢ οὐ ῥᾴδιον τὰ καλὰ πράττειν ἀχορήγητον ὄντα
AR. _Eth. Nic._ 1. 9.
VII
WALKING EQUIPMENT
Every one is well aware--if not, it is abundantly clear from the rest of
this volume--that controversy of any kind is naturally repugnant to the
amiable nature of a walker. It is therefore with some trepidation that
he approaches the highly controversial subject of equipment. Writers on
walking, and Alpine climbers--neither of them necessarily the same thing
as walkers--usually dismiss the subject in a brief and breezy chapter on
nailed boots and the back-lining of waistcoats, with a few brilliant
paragraphs on goggles and brandy, unaware that they are dancing among
the ashes of several by no means extinct volcanoes. Indeed, the subject
bristles with controversial points. The structure and fortification of
boots; the requisite number of pairs of socks; the rival claims of long
trousers and short trousers, with the subvariants of short trousers
buckling at the knees, short trousers with box-cloth continuations, and
short trousers with homogeneous continuations; the configuration of
coats; the shape of hats (if any); the functions of waistcoats; the
necessity of ties; the moral value of walking-sticks; all these subjects
of controversy meet us before we reach the really fundamental questions
of food and drink and knapsacks and their contents. But peace was never
won by shutting the eyes and pretending that differences do not exist;
and so, with whatever reluctance, we enter the lists.
The nature of the controversy may be illustrated by the discussion at
present raging around boots. Heavy nailed boots used to be taken as, in
every sense, the foundation of walking equipment--as the axiom which
could not be gainsaid. But in this age men will gainsay anything; and a
formidable school of shoe-walkers has arisen, who deny the axiom of
boots, and are ready to construct a new system on their denial. These
Lobatschewskis of footwear do not all go to the lengths of one walker
whom I knew, whose habit was to patrol grouse-moors in sandshoes; but in
his case there was a special need, since the moors were strictly
preserved, and his walking mainly consisted of short and exciting
handicaps with the walker on the five-yards mark and a keeper at
scratch. But the shoemen are ready to proclaim in the face of the
orthodox that their equipment is airier and more comfortable than boots;
and this is a controversy which, when once raised, must go forward to
its issue.
The bootmen in the first exasperation of outraged orthodoxy will
probably say that shoes are effeminate, while boots are the mark of a
man; at which the shoemen ask, why it should be effeminate to have a
soft and slight covering between the feet and reality and manly to have
several layers of bull’s hide clamped with armour-plating; and thus, by
a neat allegorical turn, they open the whole feminist question. Somewhat
sobered, the bootmen then say that boots support the ankles; to which
the shoemen reply that their ankles do not need supporting. This
innuendo finally makes the bootmen think, and they issue from their
meditations with the unanswerable remark that shoes let stones in and
boots do not. The shoemen, if they are wise, admit this, merely adding,
that if shoes let stones in they can easily be taken off and shaken; and
that if boots keep stones out, they also keep air out. The bootmen then
take the aggressive: if air is wanted, why walk at all? Why not stand on
your head with your feet out of window? To which the shoemen say, Don’t
be silly; and the bootmen say, You have no sense of humour; and the
relations of years are dissolved.
There is no need to follow this controversy further, either along its
main lines or into its side-tracks, on the questions of nails, laces,
and unguents. The issues involved are mainly utilitarian. There is
little doubt that boots are better for rough ground and bog, and shoes
for roads and level tracks; nails are necessary for rocks and steep
grass-slopes, but are a burden on the hard highway. Again, shoes
probably leave the feet freer, while boots add mechanically an extra
inch or two to the stride. The question may be pursued through all its
ramifications; and no doubt those who like quantitative thinking could
ultimately produce some sort of determination of the footgear most
likely to be suitable to the average man in the average country. Where
comfort and utility only are concerned, the vulgar processes of
comparing, adding and subtracting are quite sufficient to lead to a
conclusion.
But quantitative reasoning, though invaluable in politics, is very poor
fun. Life would have little flavour without occasional qualitative
excursions into the _a priori_. The very bitterness of feeling aroused
by discussions on walking equipment shows, I think, that something more
is involved in them than the calculable considerations of comfort and
utility. After all, it is mainly a man’s own affair whether his feet are
comfortable and whether he slips on a grass slope: and were these the
only issues, we should have no more concern with his boots than with
his breakfast or banking-account. And the same holds true for most of
the doubtful points of walking equipment. The relative comfort and
healthiness of hats, caps, and nothing can be easily determined by
counting heads and adding up (and cancelling out) medical opinions; the
practical aspect of walking-sticks could probably be exhibited by a
diagram of the body, a few mechanical equations, and a fatigue-curve or
two. But what walker worthy of the name would accept such conclusions if
they disagreed with his own views, or would even welcome them if they
disagreed with other people’s views? Who would suffer himself to be
quantitatively coerced into altering the shape of his hat, or giving up
walking-sticks, or adopting or forswearing a tie?